Mad Musings On: 'Exiled (The Protector #1)' By MR Merrik

THE BLURB:

Chase Williams is a demon hunter in the Circle, or at least he was supposed to be. On his fifteenth birthday, Chase stepped up to the altar to claim his elemental power, but it never came. Elemental magic is passed down to a hunter through the bloodline, but on Chase's birthday, the bloodline stopped. 

Exiled without the Circle's protection, Chase has spent two years trying to survive a world riddled with half-demons and magic. When he has a run in with a frightened and seemingly innocent demon, he learns the Circle's agenda has changed: the Circle plans to unlock a portal and unleash pure-blood demons into the world. Vowing to stop them, and knowing he can't do it alone, Chase forms a reluctant alliance with Rayna — a sexy witch with an attitude and a secret. 

In their attempt to stop them, Chase and Rayna find themselves in the middle of the Circle's plan, leaving one of them to decide what their friendship is worth, and the other's life depending on it.

MAD MUSINGS:

So why did I pick up this book?  Well, it's a combination of a few things - (1) I've heard many great things from my fellow Edmonton Book Bloggers  (2)I know he's a local author (From Red Deer! That's less than 2 hrs away) (3)I have an interest in reading more locally this year, as a personal challenge (4) I started following MR Merrick on twitter, and discovered he has a great sense of humour, similar to mine, and, (5) One day Exiled was a free giveaway on kindle, so I snatched it up!

Well, right away, I liked this story because it is told from a boy's POV - which is different that the usual female author and a female lead character.  It leads me to think I can get my sons, who are 14 and 12 interested in reading it too.  I am always looking for books that will get them to read more (My 14 year old doesn't want to finish Catching Fire because, ya  know, Katniss is a girl)  I think it's rare to find a YA author who is male and writes a male character that could interest teen boys as much as Percy Jackson did for my son.

For myself, I was drawn into the storytelling right away and I kept thinking that there are vague similarities to Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series - things like there's a secret group of demon hunters, the main character lives apart from them,  and there's a 'bad guy' that wants to open a door and let the demons wreck havoc on Earth.... There is, eventually, also a different dimension that is reminiscent of Steven King, or LJ Smith - I can't quite put my finger on it.  But it seemed so real to me.   After I finished reading, I find myself looking forward to Book #2, Shift, and the newly released #3 Release.

**** 4 Stars

Smart Chicks Kick It Tour Hits Edmonton

On Thursday, Sept 13 I joined the Edmonton Book Bloggers at Westside Chapters for this groundbreaking event. Not knowing what to expect, we had a plan to get in line as early as possible.  I arrived around 3:30, and found that our group was at the head of the line! WOO HOO Thanks to Kristilyn, that meant front row seats!!  I made badges for everyone in the group, and another EBB, Rola,  made the wonderful poster :) We hoped to get some recognition from the authors as well as recruit new members, and it worked! We found one at the event and a couple more later that night as we were all tweeting about it online.  We now have 15 members in our group! WOW!!

Front row!!

There's quite a crowd! Hi Rola ;) Excited much?

The time was passed very quickly - we never run out of things to talk about!  The staff at Westside Chapters were very accommodating to us - even allowing us to add Leanne and her mom to the group when they arrived late, and they helped us by taking group pictures with all our cameras.  We felt famous... almost!  LOL- I wonder if they were just as surprised by our little group as we were ourselves??  Who knew there'd be so many of us? Well, we ended up on the twitter event page, so maybe we are semi-famous now? ( or infamous.... I'll have to think on it...)  A few of the authors mentioned us on their blogs as well - Charles DeLint was taking pics of us!!  (I get ahead of myself... LOL)

GROUP SHOT!

 So after all the Smart Chicks, and one smart Chuck were introduced, we got to play a little game where we guessed 'who said that' - The three I remembered the most was that Charles was raised by crows, Beth has double jointed shoulders (and demonstrated for us OUCH!) and Veronica is scared of spiders! LOL  Margaret Stohl was the life of the party - she is absolutely hilarious!  She also hosted the 'lightning round' We could ask them any question that could also be asked of anyone in the room, and they all had to answer the first thing that came to mind!  Questions were things like favorite author, music, and my favorite "Fifty Shades: Yay or Nay?" (Most said nay - one gave a kind of iffy yay!  Hahaha)

Here's Margaret!

From the left, this is Charles DeLint, Veronica Roth, Margaret Stohl, Melissa Marr... 

cont...  Kelley Armstrong, Beth Revis, and Ally Condie WHEW! Fantastic lineup!

 Veronica Roth - author of Divergent, Insurgent and 'Detergent' 

 Allie Condie - Author of Crossed and Matched

 Kelley Armstrong - Canadian author of many books, including the Darkest Powers Trilogy and Women of the Otherworld

 Beth Revis - author of Across the Universe and A Million Suns 

 Margaret Stohl - co-author of  Beautiful Creatures series

 Charles DeLint - Canadian author of many, most recently Under My Skin

 Melissa Marr - author of Wicked Lovely series and Carnival of Souls, and others

So we finally got our chance to meet and greet! Yay!!  I look stupified in all my pics, but I'm sure that's not the fault of my lovely personal photographer! (ie, the Chapters staffmember that followed me with my camera down the line!  She was great! She even asked me what pics I wanted and which author's I wanted the most pictures of. And she did it! I forgot to ask her her name (bad me!!) but THANK YOU SO MUCH!!)  I was third in line and totally unprepared for what I would say - I was concentrating more on getting the books in the right order  HAHAHA

I really wish I had books from every author, but I can only buy so many at once!  Hahaha.  The ones I didn't have books for, I at least said Hi, and grabbed signed bookmarks. Everyone was so nice! Charles was the only one to ask about my blog, and I think I mumbled something about it - can't remember what it was!  OIIII I probably sounded challenged   

I had a fun conversation with Veronica about how I was on Team Amity when all the promos for Insurgent were going on - and BTW Team Amity won!  Can I pick them or what?

 I  love how she's a south paw :)

Wow, so, because we were only allowed to have 3 books per author, and my friend, Sarah was still en route to the event, I hoped back into line to wait for her and hold a place.  Turns out there were 750 people waiting there!  That was the largest Smart Chicks turn out so far!  I really hope that this sends a message to all the publishers out there that Edmontonians love their authors!   We want more events like this!  We love to read! (I mean, what else have we got to do during 9 months of winter???)

Thank you so much to Kelley Armstrong and Melissa Marr for organizing this tour, which all the authors funded themselves, I might add, and they picked which cities they wanted to come to :)  I hope you change your minds about this being the last year for Smart Chicks!

And another huge HURRAH!!! to Westside Chapters, for the wonderful, well organized, fun event!  You guys rocked!  And it wasn't just because of the DJ........